South Korea Priority Application 2002-57248, filed Sep. 19, 2002 including the specification, drawings, claims and abstract, is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for remote-controlling a computer, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus for remote-controlling a computer based on a DTMF (dual tone multi frequency) signal, which is received through a telephone line.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, as the Internet has been rapidly developed, the signaling speed in a personal computer has been remarkably improved. Thus, a user can download or upload files having mass capacity by accessing to a computer located in a remote place, or can use the remote computer by using a control program of the remote computer as if the user makes a local-login to the remote computer.
In an area having a LAN environment, a remote access to a computer can be achieved by using an IP (Internet protocol) address of a relative computer. In an area where the LAN environment is not provided, the communication between two computers can be achieved by connecting two computers through PSTN or MODEM.
However, although the communication environment has been improved, it is required to have an IP address (fixed or flexible IP address) of the remote computer or a telephone number of MODEM connected to the remote computer in order to access to the remote computer. In addition, the remote computer should be powered on.
For this reason, a LAN card available from a predetermined manufacturing company allows the computer to be powered on from a remote place. However, the LAN card is implemented based on the fixed IP address of the computer, so the remote-control of the computer by using the LAN card is impossible under a DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) environment, where the IP address of the computer is unknown.
Besides, many well-known techniques are used to forcibly power on the computer through a telephone line. However, those techniques use hardware to forcibly power on the computer. Accordingly, a complex work for correcting hardware of the computer is required. In addition, according to those techniques, it is impossible to normally shut down or reset the computer through an OS (operating system), so the system may be subject to a fatal damage. Furthermore, even if the computer has been powered on, it is impossible to access to the computer from the remote place if the IP address (fixed or flexible IP address) is unknown, so that the user cannot make the communication.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made to solve one or more of the above-mentioned problems occurring in the prior art, and a first object of an embodiment of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for transmitting an order for controlling a computer to the computer through a serial transmission interface by receiving the order from a DTMF signal, which is received through a telephone line.
A second object of an embodiment of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for transmitting an IP address of a remote computer to a local computer through a serial transmission interface by obtaining the IP address of the remote computer through a telephone line.
A third object of an embodiment of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for automatically accessing to a remote computer by obtaining an IP address of the remote computer from a DTMF signal, which is received through a telephone line.
A fourth object of an embodiment of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus for remote-controlling various functions of a computer including power on/off, hardware reset, normal system shut down, and normal software reset.
A fifth object of an embodiment of the present invention is to provide a method and an apparatus capable of automatically creating an E-mail including an IP address of a computer, and transmitting the E-mail to predetermined E-mail addresses.
In order to accomplish one or more of the above objects, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a remote control module for a computer, which creates an order to control a shut down and a start of a computer system by analyzing a DTMF (dual tone multi frequency) signal received through a telephone line. The remote control module comprises a telephone line interface section for outputting the DTMF signal received through the telephone line by converting the DTMF signal into a predetermined voltage level; an amplifying section for amplifying and filtering the signal transmitted from the telephone line interface section; an A/D converter for converting an analog signal of the amplifying section into a digital signal; a control section for extracting a computer remote control order from the DTMF signal by analyzing the digital signal transmitted from the A/D converter, and for creating a message based on the computer remote control order; a first relay controlled by the control section so as to output a reset signal to a reset terminal of a power circuit of the computer system; a second relay controlled by the control section so as to output an power on/off signal to a power terminal of the power circuit of the computer system; and a serial transmission interface section for receiving the message from the control section and transmitting the message to the computer system by converting the message in match with a serial transmission interface standard.